Matt Burgess Lily Hay Newman Cyberattacks and Hacks Jun 20, 2026 5:30 AM Security News This Week: Hackers Claim to Leak Stolen Madison Square Garden Data Plus: Gay bars in San Francisco using face scanners, France quits Palantir, Apple plans to change its private email, and more. Photograph: Mike Lawrence/Getty Images Save this story Save this story Meta is testing face-recognition software built by the United States military and regional police department supplier Rank One, WIRED found in an investigation this week. Meta has been exploring the possibility of adding face recognition tech into its smart glasses, and WIRED previously reported that the app for the glasses contained code —now deleted—that would have enabled the company to activate face-recognition features on the devices. Anthropic is still negotiating with the Trump administration , after apparent White House concerns about the safety of new public model Claude Fable 5 resulted in Anthropic pulling the product off the market entirely. But security experts point out that AI models with advanced capabilities for discovering and exploiting software vulnerabilities—in other words, creating potentially dangerous hacking tools— will be ubiquitous soon around the world . A leak exposed the identity of members of Peter Thiel’s secretive ‘Dialog’ society this week, revealing more than 200 prominent names registered for a retreat that includes panels on building a cult, sex, and prepping for World War III. WIRED also revealed the society has a secretive way of ranking its members . The United Kingdom will soon begin scanning the faces of asylum-seekers as part of age checks in spite of evidence that such age evaluation and verification tools are deeply flawed and can make mistakes with life-altering consequences. In more uplifting uses of surveillance tech, Knicks fans around the world had a chance to watch Thursday’s ticker tape parade in New York City on traffic surveillance cameras thanks to livestreams from the artist Morry Kolman. And there’s more. Each week, we round up the security and privacy news we didn’t cover in depth ourselves. Click the headlines to read the full stories. And stay safe out there. Hackers Allegedly Publish Stolen Madison Square Garden Data The hacking and extortion group ShinyHunters has been loudly proclaiming a slew of high-profile victims in recent months: including the education tech firm Instructure, causing disruption in thousands of schools in the process; the photography firm Kodak ; and a key European human rights organization . This week, it also published data allegedly stolen from Madison Square Garden, according to reporting by 404 Media . The published data, allegedly comprising millions of records across 45GB of files, includes potential personal information from customers and references players and coaches from the Knicks. The data was published not long after the Knicks won their first NBA championship since 1973. A sample of the data reviewed by 404 Media included one file purporting to include the names of “talent,” including Knicks members. WIRED has recently reported on Madison Square Garden’s extensive use of surveillance technologies , including face recognition systems. Alleged emails in the stolen data viewed by 404 Media include one man complaining about face recognition technology. MSG did not respond to the publication’s request for comment and after the story broke, a federal class action lawsuit was filed over the alleged data breach. San Francisco Gay Bars Are Scanning People’s Faces on Entry At least three bars in San Francisco's Castro district, the well-known LGBTQ region of the city, have been using face scanners at their entrances to collect detailed information on customers. The bars are using tech from Patronscan, an ID verification company, to collect facial images, names, genders, according to Gazetteer SF , which went to bars using the technology. As well as the data collection, if staff at the bars spot customers fighting, being involved in theft, or other negative behaviors, they can log this in the system. Face recognition can then identify the person the next time they are at the bar. The recorded information can be shared as part of a “ safety network ” between other firms using the tech, creating a widespread surveillance network. France’s Domestic Spy Agency to Drop Palantir Tech For French Alternative For months, governments and companies in Europe have been ditching US technology , citing surveillance and security risks. This week France’s domestic spy agency, the Direction générale de la Sécurité intérieure (DGSI), announced it would stop using Palantir’s data and AI tools in the coming years, replacing them with software from French firm ChapsVision. “We must use our own AI models,” French prime minister Sébastien Lecornu said. “We cannot rely on tools developed by foreign powers. France must have its own tools.” While France has been particularly proactive in trying to remove US technology from its public institutions—going as far as building its own open source equivalents to Zoom and Microsoft Office—it is not the first European intelligence agency to snub Palantir for ChapsVision. Last month, Germany’s intelligence agency BfV said it would use the French technology instead. Apple Plans To Tweak Private Email Tool—Making Its Use More Obvious Apple’s 'Hide My Email' tool allows you to generate a random email address that you can use to privately sign-up to new websites and apps , avoiding you handing over personal info to even more websites. However, the company is set to change the way it creates these email addresses. At present, they all use the @icloud.com domain. Going forward, as TechCrunch reported this week, Apple plans to use the domain: @private.icloud.com. The not-so-subtle change could make it easier for firms to detect people are using the privacy-preserving service and demand sign-ups with an alternative email address. Comments Back to top You Might Also Like In your inbox: Inside WIRED’s newsroom with Katie Drummond Peter Thiel’s secretive ‘Dialog’ society Big Story: 'Fishtank' is the OnlyFans of reality TV How Apple is making your old iPhone run faster and live longer Special edition: The future of home Matt Burgess is a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, privacy, and data regulation in Europe. He graduated from the University of Sheffield with a degree in journalism and now lives in London. Send tips to [email protected] . ... Read More Senior writer Lily Hay Newman is a senior writer at WIRED focused on information security, digital privacy, and hacking. She previously worked as a technology reporter at Slate, and was the staff writer for Future Tense, a publication and partnership between Slate, the New America Foundation, and Arizona State University. Her work ... Read More Senior Writer Topics Meta Palantir Anthropic security Read More The FCC Wants to Kill Burner Phones Plus: AI bug hunting fuels Microsoft’s biggest-ever Patch Tuesday, ShinyHunters ransomware gang exploits an Oracle zero-day, and more. Andy Greenberg Meta Silently Added Face-Recognition Code for Its Smart Glasses to Millions of Phones Code reviewed by WIRED uncovered an unreleased face-recognition system embedded in Meta’s smart glasses platform. It’s designed to identify people via biometric data stored on users’ phones. Dhruv Mehrotra The FBI Wants ‘Near Real-Time’ Access to US License Plate Readers Plus: Google publishes a live exploit for an unpatched flaw, the feds arrest two men accused of creating thousands of nonconsensual deepfake nudes, and more. Matt Burgess Crypto-Funded Chinese Peptide Labs Are Booming Plus: Hackers use Meta’s AI bots to hack Instagram accounts, Anthropic helps NSA hackers, a decades-long GPS satellite mystery may have been solved, and more. Andy Greenberg Soccer Fans, You’re Being Watched From anti-drone tech to face recognition, 2026 World Cup stadiums in the US, Canada, and Mexico are subjecting fans to an array of surveillance tech. Here’s what you need to know. Vas Panagiotopoulos Cybercrime Crew Claims It Hacked Mike Lindell’s MyPillow Plus: A ransomware group is now stealing data in person, BusPatrol wants to hand its license plate surveillance data to the cops, and more. Matt Burgess Signal Alums Reveal ‘Encrypted Spaces,’ a System for Making Private Collaboration Apps The new open-source project could serve as the basis for a future of apps with features as complex as Slack, Discord, or Google Docs—but with added protection against surveillance. Andy Greenberg Palantir Held Another ‘Hack Week.’ This Time, the Focus Was ICE The hackathon, held to build user-auditing tools for Palantir customers, comes as the company struggles to address employee concerns over its relationship with ICE. Makena Kelly Meta Tapped a Pentagon Supplier to Prototype Face Recognition for Its Glasses Rank One, whose board includes a former CIA deputy director and a former FBI science chief, supplied face recognition to Meta for internal development of its smart glasses app. Dell Cameron Anthropic Says It’s Taking Claude Fable 5 Offline to Comply With US Government Order “The government believes it has become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking’ Fable 5,” the company said in a blog post. Maxwell Zeff The Pentagon Knew Enemies Could Track Troops’ Phones for Years. Now They Are The US military has long known that cheap fixes could stop location data from exposing its troops. It adopted almost none—and now says adversaries are using the data to target soldiers during a war. Dell Cameron Google Security Engineer Arrested in Million-Dollar Polymarket Trading Scheme According to federal prosecutors, Michele Spagnuolo made more than $1 million on the prediction market platform using confidential information about Google Search traffic. Kate Knibbs